Night Of No Return

And to a body whose systems were faltering due to loss of blood, sixty-some degrees could be cold enough to kill. Alex’s skin had been cold to the touch when she had found him in the Negev. He’d been suffering from exposure, and blood loss had driven his body into shock.

She shivered, pulled off her T-shirt and kicked off the baggy boxer shorts she wore with it. Her clean things were already set out, waiting. She grabbed the panties first.

Alex. Blast the man. He’d invaded her thoughts as well as her dreams, and she couldn’t decide what to do about it. Or even if she should do something.

Last night after supper she’d offered oh-so-casually to walk back to the quarry with him. He’d pitched his tent there rather than in camp, saying he wanted to discourage further vandalism. He’d turned her down flat, and lectured her on safety.

Nora uncapped the large plastic bottle that held the lilac-scented lotion she loved, and that the dry climate demanded. It was just as well he’d turned her down. She didn’t have any business encouraging him. She remembered what Myrna had told her about Alex and their brief affair all too well.

Perfect for a fling, Myrna had said. According to her, Alex was a wonderful lover—charming, fun, and sexy enough to melt a woman’s bones with a glance.

And temporary. He’d made that clear to Myrna. Apparently, Alex was one of those commitment-shy males who preferred quantity to quality in his relationships. It was an attitude Nora despised. How many men with the same attitude had she seen waltz through her mother’s life?

Yet, for some reason, she didn’t despise Alex.

He puzzled her. His reaction to her casual suggestion that she walk back to his tent with him had been weird. You’d think she had offered to go strolling through Central Park with him at midnight. If he thought walking to the quarry at night was that dangerous, he shouldn’t be there.

Nora frowned as she pulled on her running shorts. She didn’t like the idea of his being out there alone every night. She didn’t know why anyone would have wanted to sabotage the ladder, but the act had been intended to cause harm. That was disquieting.

She didn’t like having her authority undermined, either. He hadn’t asked for permission to pitch his tent there. He’d just done it. Admittedly, Alex wasn’t exactly her subordinate. He’d been sent by Ibrahim. But she was in charge at this dig, and she didn’t like the way he forgot that when it was convenient.

He had come in handy, though. With Nora stiff and sore from her fall, Alex’s strong back had been as welcome as his expertise. He’d repaired the ladder and had spent hours digging into the hard-packed fill in the tunnel, and they were making real progress.

Professionally, they were making progress. Personally, they were stuck in a dance where he called the steps—and he was making some very mixed moves. He seemed interested in her, giving her those special smiles, sitting with her at meals, talking. He had a way of getting her to talk about herself, but he didn’t say that much about himself.

And he didn’t do anything. Like try to get her alone. Or let her get him alone.

Or kiss her. Her mind veered to that thought and got stuck. She wondered what his kiss would be like. Not gentle, she thought, though she wasn’t sure why. He acted perfectly civilized.

Yet he didn’t look civilized. Maybe it was those hard, sharp cheekbones, maybe the odd color of his eyes, but she had the sense that there was something wild about him. Power, she decided, dragging a brush through her hair. He felt like leashed power.

He came from money, she knew. Not on any grand scale, but his parents had private incomes, long pedigrees and two permanent homes, one in Cairo and one in New England. Perhaps she was simply picking up on the confidence that came from growing up wealthy and assured of his place in the world.

It was a type of confidence she’d never know. But real self-worth came from actions, not heritage, she assured herself as she fastened a band at the end of her braid. She knew she could take care of herself, that she wasn’t dependent on the whim of a man or the grinding, inadequate charity of the system. That was what counted.

Whatever the basis for the impression Alex gave of being a wild thing that had somehow wandered into camp, he behaved well enough. In fact, he was so darned pleasant and polite she couldn’t tell if he shared any of the feelings that assaulted her around him—shivery, excited feelings that were part physical need, part something else. Maybe imagination. Heaven knew she had plenty of that.

She sat on the cot to tug on her socks. She picked up a pair of athletic shoes and thunked the heels against the ground to dislodge any creepy crawlies that might have curled up inside for a snooze overnight.

It was entirely possible that she’d fantasized about him so much before he showed up that she now imagined some sort of connection between them that didn’t really exist. She was a romantic. Nora admitted that, made no bones about it. And she’d been waiting a long time for the one man, the special man, to come along. The man she could give her heart and her body to.

Maybe she had persuaded herself there was something special about Alex just because she wanted him so badly.

In the dune-rippled Negev desert, dawn is a sudden arrival. Not so in the broken land of the southern Sinai. Although the tumbled hills Alex walked now were every bit as much a desert as the one that had soaked up his blood last month, here dawn seeped in more gradually, announcing itself in graying skies before the sun peeked over the crags that had hidden its first appearance at the rim of the world.

The dim light now blending night into day told Alex he’d stayed out too long and would have to hurry to get back to camp before he was missed.

Distances and directions were hard to gauge in such rough country. He had a map, of course. It had been built by combining the twenty-first century digital wizardry of computers and satellite and reconnaissance photographs with the only detailed on-ground survey of the Sinai’s interior in existence—the maps drawn by Professor Edward Henry Potter of the British Ordnance Survey Expedition to the Sinai in 1868.

Alex knew that the terrorist base was close to the dig. He knew it was underground. That much he’d managed to learn before someone took exception to his questions and left him for dead in the Negev. But that was all he knew. Using the map, he’d selected the likeliest locations and had begun a methodical search, heading out in a different direction every night once the moon was up.

He hadn’t found the base, but last night he’d found evidence that someone had been camped on a bluff overlooking the camp. A watcher, he thought, which might mean that El Hawy didn’t have anyone planted with Nora’s crew, after all.

Alex wasn’t depending entirely on his own wanderings to find the base. He’d left word in Feiron Oasis for a man he’d worked with before to come here to the dig. Farid Ibn Kareem was a smuggler, a businessman, a thief—a canny scoundrel with an unrivaled information network, and good reason to hate El Hawy.

In the meantime, Alex would search, and he would keep track of the comings and goings of the others at the dig. Just in case. Alex hoped there was a plant. He or she would have to make contact with El Hawy at some point. Following one of the terrorists to their base would be the easiest way to locate it.

He had more than one reason now to find the base quickly.

Apparently, the mild discouragement of petty thefts was no longer enough. The damaged ladder was meant to cause an accident—an accident that, added to the other misfortunes, might cause the nosy foreigners to pack up and leave. It wouldn’t matter to the terrorists if someone died or was badly hurt—not if it accomplished their goal.

It hadn’t, of course. Nora had no intention of leaving her tunnel unexcavated.

Alex paused at the crest of a ridge, scowling at the burning sliver of sun nudging itself above a knobby hill to the west. He was not in a good mood.

He should have been. Though he hadn’t found the base, he was in a good position to search for it. With the moon nearly full, he had had decent light for his search, and his biggest problem had been solved the day he arrived. The vandalized ladder had given him a reason to pitch his tent in the quarry. He could come and go at night without anyone knowing.

From a professional standpoint, the sabotage had been a stroke of good luck. From a personal standpoint… He had no business having a personal standpoint.

He paused. That narrow slice of sun told him he’d better hurry. He had been following one of the smaller wadis, using it as a guide to get back to the quarry, but moving alongside it rather than at the bottom. He briefly considered moving to the bottom of the wadi, where he could make much better time, but the idea made the nape of his neck prickle. This particular wadi was too narrow and too exposed. A perfect place for an ambush.

He continued along the top of the wadi, his thoughts much darker than the gradually brightening air around him.

Nora was in danger. She didn’t realize that there were people who didn’t want her here routinely used mutilation or death to express their opinions. The thefts that worried Nora had reassured Alex. They had indicated that El Hawy hadn’t wanted to draw attention with anything as overt as murder.

But the open act of sabotage was a warning. The terrorists were getting nervous. The arms were on their way, and the buyer of those arms—the traitor named Simon—would be arriving once they did. El Hawy didn’t want outsiders nearby.

It was not healthy to be camped near a bunch of nervous terrorists.

The worst of it was that he couldn’t tell Nora she was in danger. He couldn’t even mention the watcher, much less tell her what was going on. He couldn’t afford for her to become too frightened or discouraged, because he needed her to continue to work the dig. He had to have a reason to be here, where few outsiders came.

Tourists didn’t venture into the Sinai’s interior. Religious pilgrims visited Mount Sinai and St. Catherine’s Monastery, while pleasure seekers stayed at resorts scattered along the coasts. Foreigners weren’t even allowed to leave the few main roads without special permits.

No, he couldn’t say anything, couldn’t even—

Alex’s thoughts stopped as suddenly as his body. He froze, head up, listening. Footfalls, coming this way down the wadi. Fast.

He moved quickly behind a boulder that overhung the dry waterbed. A perfect spot for an ambush, yes. Which was fine—as long as he was doing the ambushing.

Nora had finally managed to run her mind blank, free of all the problems that had beset the dig—and free of the man who kept invading her dreams. Her whole being was focused on the challenge and exhilaration of moving swiftly over rough terrain, in spite of the aches that still plagued her from her fall.

She was breathing hard and sweating lightly. A tight curve loomed ahead where the wadi narrowed drastically, banked by a huge boulder on one side and crumbling rock on the other.

The ground was littered with gravel and loose stones. She slowed, not wanting the complication of a turned ankle.

Something hit the ground, hard, right behind her.

She stopped dead.